Our step-by-step guide to the rules of how to play Minecraft Builders and Biomes Board Game. This is not just a generic video game adaption, this is a great engine builder that can stand on its own. The game does a great job of balancing the upgrading of your biomes for points and the exploration and strength of your character out in the Minecraft wild. Learning how to play The Minecraft Builders and Biomes does take a moment because there are many interweaving options, but it is easy to go through.
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HOW TO PLAY MINECRAFT BUILDERS AND BIOMES – WHAT IS IT?
A brand new Minecraft adventure, right at your fingertips! Collect rare blocks and build spectacular structures, but beware of dangerous mobs and scheming opponents. In Minecraft: Builders and Biomes, players explore the Overworld, mine blocks, and build. Plan your builds carefully and elude danger to succeed. May the most clever and courageous crafter win.
During your turn you must choose and perform two different actions. You cannot perform the same action twice. Once you have taken your actions, play proceeds to the left. During the game there are three scoring rounds. The player with the most experience points when the rounds are over wins.
HOW TO PLAY MINECRAFT BUILDERS AND BIOMES – STEP BY STEP
Time Needed: Approximately 30 – 60 minutes.
This is a step by step guide for how to play Minecraft Builders and Biomes the engine building board game based on the popular video game. Additional notions and special rules can be found below the list. These will be referenced for your convenience.
1. SETUP | Place Minecraft Tiles
To kick off how to play Minecraft Builders and Biomes setup, you need to make the grid of Minecraft tiles. There are 64 of these, the larger tiles with the iconic game look on the back. You need to form these into 16x stacks of four tiles each. Place these (all face down) in a 4×4 grid with plenty of space between stacks to form paths for players to walk through. These are going to flip up to be either monsters or biome upgrades.
2. SETUP | Place Weapon Upgrade Tiles
After making the base 4×4 grid, find the smaller tiles with the treasure chest back. There are 16 of these, place these around the outside so one tile sits at the end of each row. This means each side should have four of these tiles along it. These are going to be things that you can take to make your attacks against monsters better.
3. SETUP | Form Resource Block Base
The game comes with large wooden cubes of different colors that you need to form into a larger resource cube. All players will take bricks from this throughout the game to pay for things. Cubes can only be taken if two sides are showing so it gets interesting. The black and white square card is the base. On top of this take the four brown wall pieces to form a square mold. Pour the cubes into this so they form into a random cube. Pull the mold away to reveal the final cube.
4. SETUP | Give Out Player Board & Tokens
Each player gets one of the 9 biome panel and score track player boards. They also choose a color, then take the corresponding (1) score token placing it on the 0 on your track, (2) player marker and (3) 5x card attack deck in your color which should be shuffled
5. SETUP | Place Characters At Start
The bases of the character piece should correspond to your player color, but the skin you use for your actual character (the piece that goes in the base) is up to you and doesn’t have to do with your color. All players take their character and place them in the dead center of the 4×4 tile grid as a starting place. They need to venture out from here to find new things.
6. SETUP | Arrange Overview Cards
The final step of how to play Minecraft Builders and Biomes before getting into gameplay is to put out the overview cards. These are the cardboard tiles that tell you how the scoring works each turn and it shows the actions you can take on a turn.
7. GAMEPLAY | Rotate Player Turns
Each player takes one full turn, then it moves clockwise around the circle to the next player. Each turn consists of a player choosing 2 differet actions from a list of 5 options to execute. These turns move around the circle until the game ends. Staring player can be whoever last found a diamond in Minecraft, or randomizer of choice.
8. GAMEPLAY | Action Option 1 | Take Resource Blocks
Take any two blocks from the giant resource cube. The block you take must have at least two sides showing and nothing directly on top of it. This means for the very first pull, you only have the top four corners to choose from, but as you grab, more become available. These are different colors and represent the different resources needed to create – wood, stone, sand, obsidian, and emeralds.
9. GAMEPLAY | Action Option 2 | Move Character
You may move you character 0 – 3 spaces as one of you actions. This is what the paths between tiles in the grid are four. You start in the main intersection, each move it moving outward to the next intersection over in whichever direction you like. Any space can have any number of players on it but the key thing is that when you are done, you flip up and reveal any weapon or Mincraft tiles you are next two (should be 4 since every intersection collides with 4 different tiles). Some may have already been turned over, so ignore those.
10. GAMEPLAY | Action Option 3 | Building
To build, you character must be at one of the corners of the tile in question. To then buy, you need to pay the amount of resource cubes in the bottom right corner of the tile. Colors should match except for Emerald green which is wild and can be used for anything. If bought, you take the tile off of the stack and place it over any of the nine spaces on your player board, including spaces you already put new tiles on. This is how you score, there are different conditions to meet each round which are shown on the reference cards you placed in setup.
11. GAMEPLAY | Action Option 4 | Fighting Monsters
Similar to building, if a monster tile is flipped up and you are touching a corner, you can fight it. This is where your player 5 card attack deck comes in. Shuffle and flip over the top 3 tiles from it. These will show a sword with strength 1 – 3 or a poison potato worth 0. You add these up to make your attack. If that total equals or exceeds the number of hearts shown in the bottom right of the monster, you win. You take it and put it next to your board. You get points on your track equal to what is shown in the top right corner of the monster. There is also another bonus in the top right of the monster which gives you an end game score bonus or additional actions.
12. GAMEPLAY | Action Option 5 | Collecting Weapons
Similar to building and fighting monsters, there are also smaller weapon tiles all around the board. These flip up when a player gets to their intersection just like the larger tiles and can be interacted with in a similar way. As long as you are touching one of these with your character, you can just grab it at no cost and add it to your personal attack deck. This helps ensure that better cards come up when you attack. These can also have bonuses in the top right corner like having you flip additional tiles.
13. GAMEPLAY | Round End and Scoring
There are three rounds of scoring. The reference cards show that each round has a different objective for scoring. It might be about collecting types of biomes or it might be about other similar attributes, but it is all about what is on your personal player board. There are three rounds of scoring. Each round is triggered when an entire row has been removed from the large resource cube of blocks. The square is four rows high, once the top row is gone, that ends round 1, and so on. This means the very bottom row of the cube doesn’t affect things, just the three above it. During these scoring phases, move your experience token along the score track that many points.
14. GAMEPLAY | Score End Game Bonuses
After the third round of scoring, see if you have any bonuses from your monsters as shown by the symbols in their top left corner. Add any experience points from that to your score track titles now.
15. WINNING | High Score Wins
Whoever has the highest overall experience point total is the winner. As you can see, there is a lot going on, but learning how to play Minecraft Builders and Biomes is in fact easy.
HOW TO PLAY MINECRAFT BUILDERS AND BIOMES – KEY INFORMATION
BEGINNER VARIANT
If you are playing for the first time, or with kids, there is a great way to simplify the three scoring rounds: Instead of counting the largest continuous group, just count all spaces matching the criteria on your player board. That means less planning ahead since you can place the building cards on any space of your player board. You can also combine rules, having kids play by this but adults play by the more stringent rules.
GAME CONTENTS
- 64x Wooden Blocks
- 64x Building and Monster Cards
- 36x Weapon Tokens
- 4x Player Boards
- 4x Experience Counters
- 4x Character Skins
- 4x Player Game Piece Bases
- 12x Overview Cards
- 1x Block Base
- 1x Support Structure
HOW TO PLAY MINECRAFT BUILDERS AND BIOMES – IN CLOSING
We hope you can now say you know how to play Minecraft Builders and Biomes. This is not just a generic video game adaption, this is a great engine builder that can stand on its own. There is a good amount to do that will take a little getting used to, but the game is easy and kids, the target audience for the video game, as well as adults will certainly enjoy it. This is an engine builder that has you balancing combat and scoring points via your evolving biomes. There is a good flow to everything.
